Stewart Cink has revealed he told Rory McIlroy how proud he was of his 2025 Masters victory, describing the Northern Irishman's par putt on the 18th hole as the most pressure-packed in the history of golf.
Cink, who won The Open Championship in 2009, caught up with McIlroy at Royal Portrush weeks after the Masters and congratulated him on his first Green Jacket. Speaking to Beyond the Clubhouse earlier this month, the 53-year-old detailed his private conversation with McIlroy.
'Name a putt that had more pressure on it'
Cink said: "The main thing I remember telling him was how proud I was for him that he followed through on that and won, because it’s just something not many people have done, and that doesn’t need to be stated, that’s pretty understood by everybody."
He added: "But the thing that struck me about the moment when he won was he probably faced the one putt with the single most pressure – the par putt on 18, which was about a five-footer, maybe six-feet, outside right, lot of break to the left, all that riding on it – name a putt that had more pressure on it than that. You can’t. In all the history of golf, I think that was the putt."
'Everybody wants Rory to win'
Describing McIlroy's likeability, Cink said: "Everybody wants Rory to win. He’s so likeable. There’s not that many players in the history of the game that are well-liked by the public and by the peers. Sometimes, there’s a little bit of a difference between the two groups."
He continued: "Rory’s well-liked and embraced by all groups, and for good reason. I just wanted him to understand that’s how I felt about it. I thought that putt was incredibly high pressure-packed. And of course, what happened? He went into a playoff because he didn’t make the putt, but I just thought it was worth saying, hey, that was a hard putt."
Cink concluded: "I don’t think many people watching golf can understand how much pressure that was and how he would have felt over that putt. So for him to go on through that miss and win in a playoff with all that riding on it was pretty awesome, and that’s what I told him."
McIlroy is currently competing in the DP World India Championship in New Delhi.
